Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic takes turn based strategy one step further.
User Rating: 9.3 | Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic PC
Age of Wonders is a turn based strategy game centered around building your cities, hiring troops, researching spells and using heroes to whack your enemies. It may sound like a clone from Heroes of Might and Magic but it's much more than a mere clone. Although some features do resemble a Heroes' game, the city production queue and research management reminded me of my beloved Civilization series. Let's start from the beginning, shall we? The game takes place in a fantastic world torn apart by a wizard war. The use of magic has been the source of nature's impoverishment as wizards drew their mana from the world's very resources. People grew weary of magic and abolished it after the war. You start the game as a young wizard whose quest is to show the world that the misuse of magic in the past does not mean that it's not necessary to the protection of the peoples of the world. With a handful of followers, you create your first settlement. Managing your settlement is not an easy task. There's only one production queue. That is, you'll either produce troops or buildings. Hiring units and creating buildings require "production resources", which are gained by the growth of your settlement and empire. Yep, you can hire settlers to create more cities and enhance your overall production. Cities also produce: research, used to research mighty spells and special skills; mana: used to cast your spells; and fame, which affect the moral of your troops and call the attention of special units called heroes. Heroes are special units that can advance in levels, carry magic items and allow you (the mighty wizard in the tower) to cast spells during combat. Your troops will be based in the race you choose to command. There are classic races like halflings, undead, humans, dwarves and some pretty weird fellas such as archons (champions of light and good), Tygrans (a felyne race of fierce warriors) and the Syrons (dwellers of the shadow world), not to mention a couple extra, to a grand total of 15 races. Although one could classify troops into categories like basic footmen, cavalry and ranged units, every race bestows some kind of special ability/inability to each main category in order to make it somewhat different from the rest. For instance, Orc footmen are tougher than any other; felyne "cavalry" (a large charging black panther) can climb walls; dark elf cavalry drains life from opponents and shadow demon ranged unit has area of effect bombardment ability. the feeling of being unique is enhanced by the fact that every race improves one of your resources. Tygrans improve wealth, undead improve research and so on. Combat takes place in an open map, X-Com style. You move your troops, then I move mine. Every unit use its ability, attack or cast spells 'til one of the side is the winner. Careful strategy is required in order to lay siege in enemy castles, defeat über units with a horde of weaklings or to fire cannons and catapults without frying your own troops. On the main map, you can choose to control key points like bridges, mines and mana nodes or simply destroy them. This choice will affect your relationship with the gods, that will reward or punish you accordingly. There are simply zounds of strategies one can adopt to win a game. Expand like a madmen, focus on über units, research the most powerful spells or building an impenetrable fortress. Multiplayer is a fun and rewarding experience. There's nothing like beating a 4 player free-for-all or winning a 3x3 match against Emperor A.I. opponents. A must for strategy players. 
